By Hannah Stephenson

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Gavin And Stacey star Joanna Page has said she did not complain when she was groped by a “handsy” presenter of an entertainment show because she “did not want to make a fuss”.

The Welsh actress, 48, best known for playing Stacey Shipman in the beloved TV series, said she believes young actresses will always fall victim to harassment by predators because there are so many that are desperate for work.

She details her own experiences of sexual harassment in her new memoir, Lush.

She told the PA news agency: “There are always going to be predators in an environment like this when you’ve got young, beautiful girls who are desperate to get a job.

“It is so hard to get that job.

“Most of the time the people who are giving you those jobs are older men and they know that you want the job and there’s a million girls out there trying to get the job.

“I think that will continue.”

“I think things have got better and you’ve got intimacy coaches now who are fantastic.

“There’s a lot more safety there and you’ve got phone numbers you can phone to report people if you feel like you’re being bullied.

“But I think, personally, that it’s (sexual harassment) always going to continue because there’s too much opportunity for it to happen in this profession.”

Page added: “You don’t ever go, ‘Oh God, I’m going to report this’, because in those days you kind of didn’t, you just got on with it, it was what happened at work.

“It wasn’t every single job I went into, but in lots of different jobs there would be one type of thing.”

She recalled being warned by a female producer of an entertainment show that the presenter could be “very handsy with the women” and would probably start touching her but that that was “just him” and not to worry about it.

“I was in my dressing room and the producer came in and said, ‘Oh, just to give you a warning, he does like to get a bit ‘handsy’ with the women.

“I think he’s going to like you so just be prepared.

“And it was like, ‘Oh, Ok, right, well, I can deal with that.

“So I went out on set and we’re filming and then he starts groping me and I said something like, ‘God, I feel like I’m in Bristol Zoo’ and knocked his hand away.”

Page said she tried to keep it lighthearted and would not have dreamed of making a complaint.

She added: “It’s all very well saying ‘You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that’ but you’re a woman, you’re in there and it’s so hard to get jobs anyway and you don’t want to make a fuss.

“I couldn’t have sat in a studio and gone, ‘Excuse me, can we please just stop this because he’s touching me up and completely groping me? I’m not happy with this’.

“For starters, I’m a people pleaser.

“I don’t want to make a fuss or draw attention to what’s going on.

“I just want to get on with it.

“So the only way to deal with it was laugh it off.”

On another occasion when she was at the end of the run of a play, a well-known theatre director who had seen the show walked into her dressing room when she was barely clothed.

She said that she ended up covering herself in a curtain to contain his overly tactile approaches.

“I remember being in my knickers and wrapping the curtain around me and this director coming and hugging me and wanting to give me a kiss and not leaving me alone.

“I remember holding on to the curtain and not letting it go and just carrying on the conversation, being all polite and really nice, until eventually he went because nothing was going to happen.”

Lush!: My Story – From Swansea To Stacey And Everything In Between by Joanna Page is published on September 25.